Dino, Heal Thyself: Giant Beast Shrugged Off Bone Trauma

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A giant carnivorous dinosaur apparently possessed an enormous
power to heal its broken bones, thanks to new findings revealed
by powerful X-rays, researchers say.

The new findings suggest this
ancient predator could shrug off massive trauma, revealing
the dinosaur healed well like reptiles do than more poorly like
birds do, which dinosaurs are more closely related to, scientists
added.

Dinosaur bones sometimes include evidence they cracked and mended
while the reptiles lived. Such findings can yield insights into
how much violence dinosaurs experienced, and whether they
healed differently than other animals.

Analyzing fossils for signs of healed fractures often involves
slicing through them, damaging these rarities. Now scientists
have used intense X-rays with beams brighter than 10 billion suns
to illuminate breaks hidden within the bones of a
150-million-year-old predatory dinosaur. [ Paleo-Art:
Dinosaurs Come to Life in Stunning Illustrations ]

The researchers examined a toe bone from a giant carnivorous
dinosaur, Allosaurus
fragilis , excavated from Utah. They bombarded the fossil
with X-rays from the Diamond Light Source in England and the
Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource in California. Both
light sources are synchrotrons, or particle accelerators that can
generate powerful beams of light, which the investigators used to
analyze the chemical nature of samples down to a resolution of 2
microns, or 1/50th the average diameter of a human hair.

There are subtle chemical differences between normal and healed
bone tissue. The scientists discovered they could detect the
"chemical ghosts" of ancient breaks.

"This is beyond recognizing a healed injury — this is mapping the
biological processes that enable that healing," said study author
Phillip Manning, a paleontologist and director of the
Interdisciplinary Center for Ancient Life at the University of
Manchester in England. "The ability to map the biological
processes of healing allows great insight to the physiology and
metabolism of animals. To extend this into the fossil record
might provide new insight on many groups of vertebrates, not just
dinosaurs."

The researchers found this dinosaur could apparently shake off
massive trauma, healing from injuries that would prove fatal to
humans if not treated. Curiously, this fact suggests dinosaurs
healed more effectively like reptiles such as crocodilians than
less effectively like close dinosaur relatives such as birds,
Manning told Live Science. One might speculate these differences
are due in part to how birds typically possess hollow bones to
lighten them for flight.

"This is the starting point in a new line of research that has a
long way to go when comparing the chemistry of bone between
species, both modern and extinct," Manning said. "We are already
looking at new techniques that might further expand our
understanding of the growth, trauma and healing of bones in
vertebrates."

Manning and his colleagues detailed their findings online today
(May 7) in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.